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Our dog has an endearing, if sometimes annoying, ritual for greeting us when we come back from a shopping trip. He carefully sniffs every bag, checking “what’s in this for dogs?” In the same spirit, let’s look at the new statement from the Heart and Stroke Foundation and ask “what in this for men (and boys)?”

The simple answer is, a lot. A quick summary of what the experts are now recommending is that we should eat a balanced diet, and stop obsessing on trying to limit specific nutrients like fats, salt, and sugar. A healthy body needs all of these, in moderation. That’s where it gets interesting.

In a book called It’s Different for Men Toronto-based diet coach Harvey Brooker explains that men usually don’t think much about their weight until well into their 40s, when their doctor warns them they’re headed for trouble. Of course there are exceptions. Some boys and men are very food aware, and others suffer from food obsessions and eating disorders.

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Brooker notes that men almost invariably gain weight around the abdomen, which “creates very real health hazards including heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and poor sexual function.”

Another point Brooker makes is that we have a cultural notion of what constitutes “men’s food.” He asks us to picture a meal “fit for a king” and suggests we probably conjured up a “man-sized portion” of steak. “Men eat way too much red meat and protein in general,” he writes. He also points the finger at sports, not the kind men do, but the kind they watch on TV with a bowl of chips and a case of beer.

So we certainly shouldn’t take the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s statement as a licence to stop paying attention to what goes into our mouths. Instead, we should look at the other point they emphasized — the evil that lurks within highly processed foods.

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It’s not exactly surprising news.

Noted cardiologist Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian and colleagues at Harvard medical school crunched the data from large, long-term studies of nurses and doctors in the U.S. They published their results in the New England Journal of Medicinein June, 2011.

They found that non-obese Americans gained about a third of a kilogram per year over the adult period, which certainly adds up. Their analysis confirmed that “consumption of processed foods that are higher in starches, refined grains, fats, and sugars can increase weight gain.”

News like this sent many people to the “low fat” section of the grocery store. Not so fast! A recent study led by Alyssa Schermel of the University of Toronto analyzed nearly 6,000 grocery store products. Those labelled “no fat” or “low fat” or “fat free” did indeed contain less fat. The problem is that manufacturers who process these foods often replace the fat with starches and sugars, causing the total calories to pop right back up.

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In another study, Schermel looked at foods labelled as having reduced sodium content. Guess what? In the breakfast cereal category, the low sodium products were indeed lower in sodium. They were also “40 per cent higher in total fat, 17 per cent higher in sugar and 19 per cent higher in calories” compared to the regular products.

So, what’s a guy to eat? Dr. Mozaffarian’s study does give us some hope that we can actually eat more food — if we eat smart.

He writes that “some foods — vegetables, nuts, fruits, and whole grains — were associated with less weight gain when consumption was actually increased. Obviously, such foods provide calories and cannot violate thermodynamic laws. Their inverse associations with weight gain suggest that the increase in their consumption reduced the intake of other foods to a greater (caloric) extent, decreasing the overall amount of energy consumed.” The experts also note that these foods tend to have a higher fibre content and slower digestion process, which helps you to feel full longer.

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They also had good things to say about yogurt which, let’s face it, is not usually thought of as “guy food”. The researchers found that yogurt consumption was associated with less weight gain in both men and women, and note that “intriguing evidence suggests that changes in colonic bacteria might influence weight gain”.

If highly processed food is the road to dietary hell, sodas and some sports drinks are, as one diet expert put it, “liquid Satan”. Here we can give ourselves a little pat on the back. Consumption of soft drinks in Canada has plunged over the last decade, from 104 litres per capita in 2005 to an estimated 70 litres per capita in 2015.

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However, experts warn that some of the alternatives, from juice beverages to some kinds of enhanced water can be just as bad. Read the label of a 591 mL bottle of Tropical Citrus Vitaminwater and you’ll see it has 120 calories. By comparison, a standard 355 mL can of Coca-Cola has 140 calories, and their new 310 mL mini-can has, you guessed it, 120 calories.

So there’s one more habit we’ll probably be picking up from the ladies, and that’s reading the labels. Alternatively, you can just drive your cart down the fruit and vegetable aisle, with a side trip to the fish section, and save the T-bone steaks for a real manly treat now and then.

Dr. Tom Keenan is an award winning journalist, public speaker, professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary, and author of the bestselling book Technocreep.

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